Finely engraved sea chart of the North Sea, published by johannes Loots.
The overall size of the chart was approximately 40 x 24 inches. The work is apparently from a very rare sea atlas, published by Johannes Loots (1665 - 1726), based in part upon information derived from Christoffel Middagten (1659 - 1723). We have identifed an example of a 14 sheet sea atlas in the Library of Congress with no title, which may include this map, as well two separate copies noted below. It appears that Loots created a working sea atlas for Mariners by pasting the charts back to back, so that a single map became 3 pages in the book, which would account for the extreme rarity.
Johannes Loots was a publisher who flourished in the competitive sea chart trade of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Despite the presence in Amsterdam of such better known chart publishers as van Keulen, Doncker, and Lootsman, Loots published several sea atlases and separately issued charts. The inventory of his shop included 464 copperplates, a figure much larger than the actual number known.